Moon Flower
by Lamanth
Summary: ONE SHOT – Fickle moon, whose phases change from day to day, the only constant in my life is the pain of loneliness to which you bare witness. Sasuke/Ino Happy Birthday Ino!


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rights, ect… (I think you get the point.)

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Summery 

ONE SHOT – Fickle moon, whose phases change from day to day, the only constant in my life is the pain of loneliness to which you bare witness. (Sasuke/Ino)

Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed, as are random acts of worship.

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Lamb: I just want to apologies in advance, I wrote this in half an hour at the library as my net's gone down and my laptop is acting up.

**Muse:** Pathetic reason if ever I heard one.

_Dedi:_ Shut up you. This fic is dedicated to all the amazing SasuIno writers out there as well as today's birthday girl, Ino!!

Lamb: As always sorry for any bad spelling and if you feel the need to throw things at me please wait until I've hidden behind the sofa kay!?

M**use: **On with the fic!

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_Who painted the moon black?  
Oh won't you, won't you come back?  
It must have been the darkest night,  
Not even a star in sight,  
Just as you walked away from me,_

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**Moon Flower**

_The milk glass moon hangs full and bright, bathing the world in a light, which turns everything it, touches to polished silver. The grass stirs, transforming it into a wide silver sea. The night is warm and a soft late summer wind caresses her face as she sits in the long grass awaiting him, though she knows he will never come._

"I see the moon, and the moon sees me. And the moon sees the one that I want to see. So God bless the moon and God bless me. And God bless the one that I want to see."

And as the temple bells began to strike the midnight hour, Ino Yamanaka wrapped her arms around her knees and burying her head in the dark space she created sobbed silently. If she strained her ears she could hear the distant sounds of her friends enjoying themselves as the commemorated the day eighteen years past when her bestfriend had been born. And when the bells tolled their last the happy group would start to honour the day of her birth.

How many years had it been now? The eve of her thirteenth birthday had been the first time she had stolen away from the celebrating of her friends and ran to the place she had always though of as _theirs_. But there was no _them_, there never had been and there never would be. In her heart of hearts Ino had always known that Sasuke Uchiha would never be hers, but that had never been enough to stop her from hoping and dreaming.

People said that the heart shed its hopes like a tree shedding its leaves in autumn, but no matter how many fell there would always be more. And Ino fancied herself a ragged bit of colour hanging to the bare branches of her barren and broken life.

Their encounters have been brief and few, but in the man she has met on the battlefield she still finds traces of the boy she had once known. With the birth of this day she has turned from a child into a young woman of eighteen, but the child's love that filled her from such a young age lingered on. And filled her nights with dreams of a love that even time its self would stop and lie down for, and of a stone cold heart that will beat only for her.

It was stupid to hang on to such an unrealistic fantasy, but Ino could not find the strength to let it go. All her friends were getting their lives together, even Sakura had moved on and was now in a happy and loving relationship with Naruto. Romance seemed to be all around her, even in the most unlikely of places, between Choji and Hinata for example, but always Ino found herself on the outside looking in. She would never be able to give her heart to anyone, for it already belonged to a man who probably didn't even remember her name.

And so as the last distant chime faded into the night and marked the transition from old day to new, the golden flower of Konoha wept for a love she knew would never come to pass.

--

He stood behind her, watching, debating. Hidden in the shadow of the tress, his chakra suppressed to expertly that not even the most skill tracking nin would be able to detect his presence. It was wrong for him to love her this he knew. He knew it and yet was powerless to stop the feelings that dragged him back to this spot, on this night every year since he left the village he had once called home.

Sasuke can hear her soft sobs, they are carried to him by the same wind that carries the subtle floral scent of her perfume. And as he has every time before, he wonders what would happen if he dared to move from his hiding place. If he approached the girl who had somehow managed to work her way into his heart without even realising it. In his mind he can see it, how he would walk up to her and she would raise her head shock turning to wonderment.

He would lift her hands to his lips, and kiss one then the other, licking, nipping and sucking. Slowly he would make love to the right and then the left. And all the while neither of them would utter one single word. But he knows that such ideas are only the flights of dreams. For even though the love she held for him still endured, he was a traitor to her beloved Konoha and it was with the village that Ino's loyalties lay.

Hidden in his hand he held the treasure he had picked out all those years before, intended to be the gift he would give her on her thirteenth birthday. The gift that would reveal to her just how he felt. A fine silver chain, thin as the gossamer from which spiders webs were spun but as strong as steal, and on the end hung one bright shining moonstone. A stone with its faint blue and silver shades he had thought perfect for her. The moonstone for the moon flower. But he had not been able to give it to her, and now knew that he never would.

It was funny in a sad, macabre sort of way he had thought his heart had finally been starved into submission. But as the years rolled by each time he saw her it would continue to leap in such a way that would cause his breath to catch. It was a black and withered thing without compassion or pity. And yet when Sasuke saw her sitting staring out at the moon reflected on the mirror smooth surface of the lake, he was reminded that in spite of all that Orochimaru had done to try and change the fact, he was still human.

He is, but he wouldn't be surprised if Ino were not. His mind was filled with the essence of the girl who looked like the angle that fell to earth. She was as pure and beautiful as a lily, a white flower growing in the desert, a white bird gliding in the blue vault of the sky. She was flawless like the snow on the mountain tops, all the glittering, tawdry charms of Hell could not touch her divine beauty, because she was the very image of Heaven. Of his heaven.

They called her 'The Golden Flower of Konoha' but they were wrong. She was carved of silver and crafted from the moonlight, as cold and unreachable as the distant stars. Siting in the moonlight, clad in a simple dress of white silk with that waterfall of silver blonde hair cascading around her she looked so pale. Pale and perfect. And he wondered how things might have been if he had stayed, would he now be there beside her, siting under the soft silvery light.

Turning on the spot Sasuke slipped away into the dark shadow of the woods, heading for the borders of Konoha, fearful that if he dallied longer that his resolve would crack. He there for did not see the way that the blonde raised her head and turned to look at the place he had been standing as if for a moment she had felt someone watching her.

"Star light, star bright. First star I've seen tonight. Wish I may, wish I might. Have with wish I wish tonight."

Sasuke's words were hardly more than a whisper as he moved silently as a ghost through the night-time forest. Leaping lightly from branch to branch, he moved further from the pain filled kunoichi and yet somehow carried her pain with him. And that was the reason behind every wish that he made, to end the pain and suffering that she was forced to live with. The wish to mend the broken heart of Ino Yamanaka.

_The milk glass moon hangs full and bright, bathing the world in a light, which turns everything it, touches to polished silver. The grass stirs, transforming it into a wide silver sea. The night is warm and a soft late summer wind caresses her face as she sits in the long grass awaiting him, though she knows he will never come._

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Lamb: I will read though and correct this when I have my net back but for now all I can say is I hope you liked it.

**Muse:** I didn't!!

_Dedi:_ You don't count. Happy Birthday Ino.

Please R and R I'd love to know what you thought.

Big luv see ya

Lamanth


End file.
